Sunday, October 05, 2008

Getting Al Pacino and Robert Deniro together in a film is like getting Cartoon and Estevan together on a project: A guaranteed success story. This is the Righteous Kill poster story. After the first meeting with Overture Films we knew something great could come out of this project, and they seemed as excited about getting the SA Studios team involved in the film’s marketing and design as they did about its lead character’s involvement. After the business wrangling from our business team, Estevan had the “unfortunate job” (joking), of shooting Al and Bobby, as he likes to call them.

A year ago if you asked Estevan his ambitions within photography, this would have been top of the list. Cartoon and I went to Vegas to hold things down at the Magic clothing convention while Estevan, for the first time in 12 years, missed the show and stayed behind.

Estevan arrived on set and waited for his chance to shoot the guys. Two days went by as Estevan patiently waited for his moment. Our trip in Vegas was drawing to a close and the initial boastful remarks regarding Estevan’s absence. (“He is shooting a couple of actors,” Cartoon would say. “You know, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.”) By the end we were getting nervous as Estevan’s text messages were getting more and more frustrated about the shoot. Estevan patiently waited for the opportunity, and after another 8 hour day of waiting on set, Estevan went outside of the studio and started debating whether it would ever happen and should he stay or should he go? Then all of a sudden the fire door burst open and out walked Al and Bobby. “Right we are ready for the shot,” Bobby says. Estevan had 5 minutes to get the shot; his first choice of camera being the trust worthy Canon AE1 that froze in aura of the two actors, leaving Estevan in a predicament. He went for his backup camera, the Pentax 6*7 and fired the shutter 14 times before his time with the guys was over.

Below you can see the product of those 5 minutes of Estevan’s shooting, a logo created by Cartoon, and a project artistically put together by Patrick Martinez.